This morning, two deer hunters holding rifles were on private property in this area.

Hunting is now considered “sport,” not a necessary food supply to hungry people.

Little supervising or enforcement of the existing regulations was evident this year, with a vast increase of hunters.

Gunshots were fired after dark and on Sundays. Rifles were used long after the Dec. 11 cut-off date.

The justification for the extra week of rifle use this year was a supposedly increased deer population. But, aside from Nantucket and the Vineyard, the increase was not substantial enough to warrant an extended hunt.

The theory that killing the deer will reduce the deer ticks and Lyme Disease is unfounded, due to the study done on Cape Cod in the 1980s. The deer were shot on Great Island, all to the scientists’ discovery that the number of deer ticks on the remaining deer population actually doubled.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife determines the length and conditions of the hunting in the state, and they have an agenda – to raise revenue through the sale of hunting licenses. Public safety issues, or the horror of maiming a deer so that it cannot survive without suffering, is not considered at all.

Allowing an unregulated free-for-all for an entire month of gunshots and arrows in the air is absolute insanity, when you consider it is all for “sport.”

Unless sufficient law enforcement can monitor this activity, it ought not persist.